The figures show that the province of Alicante maintained the recovery started in the previous months in the first quarter of 2023. The report presented yesterday by the Institute of Economic Studies (Ineca) specifies that both tourism and construction are the sectors that “show a significant recovery that, however, still does not have a significant reflection in the movement of financial funds.”
Diving into the data collected in the report, it can be seen that, in effect, the real estate activity once again acts as the locomotive of the provincial economy: new construction housing visas include 969 files in March, a figure that has not been recorded since 2008 , when the global cataclysm of the sector put the entire system at risk.
Contrast the increase of 32.3% in the construction of new housing compared to the last quarter of 2022 in Alicante with the minimal increase, a full stoppage (0.4%), that the sector experiences in the whole of Spain. Between January and March, the province carried out 13,662 home purchase and sale operations, 311 more than in 2022, an increase of 2.3%, while the country as a whole suffered a decrease of 10%.
With 13,662 in the quarter, Alicante maintains a solid third position in the province by number of sales transactions in Spain, only behind Madrid (18,523) and Barcelona (15,084). 17% of these operations in the province were carried out by resident foreigners, which in Spain as a whole represent only 10.8%.
Regarding tourism, the Costa Blanca has just exceeded 82.7% of hotel occupancy during the first half of July during the first half of July, 88.1% in Benidorm, exceeding in the first case the overnight stays of 2019, and being very close in the case of the city of skyscrapers.
The Director of Studies and author of the report, Francisco Llopis, highlights that companies in Alicante have an average of 8.6 workers, clearly below the national average, which stands at 11.4. Companies based in Madrid have 14.4 employees on average, but neighboring provinces such as Valencia and Murcia are also larger than Alicante, with 11.1 and 11.3 employees respectively.
This being the case, Llopis wonders if the high rate of people from Alicante who embark on the adventure of becoming self-employed, which exceeds the Spanish average, will not be an indicator both of the entrepreneurial character of the premises and of the lack of job prospects that it offers them. the market. The president of Ineca, Nacho Amirola, believes that the province “is at the right time to grow in business size and ultimately be more competitive.”
Another of the authors of the report, Quino Palací, explains that tax collection has increased to a greater extent in Alicante due to the increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage, something that has not occurred in provinces where wages are higher. The characteristics of the labor market confirm that the demanded retention of university talent is still a chimera, since Alicante with higher education lack job opportunities at home related to their vocation and are forced to emigrate if they want to develop it.
The report draws attention to the limited impact that, up to now, the commitment of administrations to the digital economy is having on employment. Precisely a few meters from the Ineca headquarters, stands the jewel in the crown of the Digital District, a high-cost building of the Generalitat Valenciana, located on port land, which up to now houses six technology companies, with a total of 120 workers. Until it is verified whether this project and others are capable of generating sufficient business “muscle” and generating qualified employment, the truth is that, according to the Ineca report, digitization barely accounts for 1.47% of employment in Alicante, while in Valencia the figure stands at 2.8%.
Another worrying fact that speaks of the lack of dynamism of the provincial economy indicates that Alicante leads the negative national ranking of loss of financial funds (credit deposits) since 2019, with a negative balance of more than 12,000 million. And the gap is big: the next with the worst evolution is Murcia, with a loss of about 2,000 million. Other provinces, on the other hand, continue to grow, as is the case of Barcelona, ??Valencia, Madrid or Malaga, which improve their funds all together by more than 94,000 million.
Practically, according to the report, half of the requested credit is available at its peak, specifically 55% (year 2018). If credits have fallen, deposits have had the same luck, not reaching 87% of what existed before the covid health crisis, he specified. “The province suffers from anemia because money does not circulate and, in the absence of oxygen, the economy slows down and loses intensity,” Palací warned.
